Karen Demirchyan

Karen Demirchyan (17 April 1932-27 October 1999) was First Secretary of the Armenian Communist Party from 27 November 1974 to 21 May 1988, succeeding Anton Kochinyan and preceding Suren Harutyunyan. He briefly served as Speaker of the National Assembly in 1999 before his assassination by the ARF.

Biography
Karen Demirchyan was born on 17 April 1932 in Yerevan, Armenian SSR, Soviet Union, and he attended the Yerevan Polytechnical Institute from 1949 to 1954. That year, he joined the Armenian Communist Party and became the secretary of the Yerevan Electrotechnical Factory's party committee, gaining a diploma in higher party service in Moscow in 1961. In November 1974, he became the First Secretary of the Armenian Communist Party, effectively making him head-of-state of communist Armenia under the USSR. Semi-legal and illegal business led to the growth of Armenia into one of the most prosperous Soviet republics, but his inability to crush Armenian nationalism in the country led to him losing favor with Mikhail Gorbachev's CPSU and his 1988 dismissal on "health grounds". In 1998, he ran for president of Armenia as a socialist candidate, winning 40% of the vote. In June 1999, however, he was overwhelmingly elected Speaker of the National Assembly, and he would spend four months in this post. On 27 October 1999, he was assassinated by an ARF attack squad when they assaulted the Armenian parliament and killed eight politicians.